Pigs is Pigs

Continuing from the Old Garbage Dump, the rest is history at this point. A lot of my stuff from the past 5 or so years can be seen on my website or here. Most of it is flat, retro, Illustrator, cartoon stuff, some of it is is not. Some of it is old, some of it is new. Some of it is good, some of it is not AS good. But it's all mine I guess. That sounds stupid.

I am currently working on lots of fun stuff for Feature Films for Families. They're going to use a new studio for their animated series, Pig Tales, and I'm redesigning the style of all of the characters and backgrounds for it's second season. It's been great and this stuff has received a positive response so far, so that's exciting for a nerd like me. Here's a pic of all the newly designed characters and a few sketches of the turn-around model sheet stuff.

College Sketchbooks

Mr. Hooper & his upaid gambling debts

ToonClub's topic this week is Sesame Street. I had no idea what to do. So many characters, skits, cartoons, it was too much for me to process any good ideas. Then I remembered poor old Mr. Hooper and that he died in the early 80's. They had an episode where Big Bird found out about his death and how to deal with it. The actor who played him really did die and this was PBS's solution. I wondered HOW Mr. Hooper died (not the actor just the character) I dunno if they explained that. I figure he got "rubbed out." You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Maybe he owed a lot of scary people a lot of money. Maybe he was formally known as Marcello "Specs" Fiorillo, and "Mr. Hooper" was the life the Witness Protection Agency gave him. Maybe he was some poor unsuspecting shop owner who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I dunno, but I think a major spit storm went down that day on Sesame Street.

Hey Rocky, watch me pull RAGE outta my hat!

This illustration sure is small in this format. Too short and wide I guess, but it was the only way I could fit all of the characters in! Click on it for a bigger version.

This week's ToonClub topic is Rocky and Bullwinkle. I really got excited about redesigning all of the characters from their variety show. The original designs by Jay Ward are cool, and being a 60's animation fan, I like them even though they are simple, but I thought I could try to improve upon them a little, so I Bryan Beached them up a bit. I figured they could all be together in Palm Springs for a some sort of reunion. Bullwinkle is so stupid, maybe Rocky had a few too many martinis and decided he'd had enough of being Bullwinkle's sidekick. I think Rocky is probably an angry drunk and Sherman is wearing a Weezer T-shirt.....tee hee.

Little Peach Colored Men

When I was a kid, I used to sleep way down in the basement and was always secretly a little scared of some sort of an alien encounter. Those probing stories always sound so uncomfortable. However, when I was in collage I became sort of fascinated with aliens and started figuring, if there were little green men out there, maybe they weren't so little, and maybe they weren't men, and maybe they weren't even green....no, of course they were green. But maybe they were tall, attractive, female aliens. After dwelling on that, these visitors didn't seem so bad.

Anyway, back in my garage band days, I wrote a number of songs envisioning space travel and hip aliens. I'm a nerd. I thought a cool music video idea would be the awkward marriage of a space man to an attractive alien lady. Last week, ToonClub gave me the opportunity to illustrate this idea. Whatever.